Saturday, March 03, 2007

For me, Ann Coulter jumped the shark a long time ago. She has the capability to be witty and make sharp points, but sacrifices all that by her overuse of invective. I don't like that sort of approach from liberals, why should it be more acceptable because she is a conservative? Now, she has raised a ruckus by going before the CPAC crowd and calling John Edwards a faggot.

Geesh, how infantile can you get? It's not funny. There is no essential wit there - just a demeaning homophobic insult. There are so many ways to ridicule John Edwards and she just displayed her own weakness at biting political commentary by not making a humorous play on any of the real reasons why conservatives dislike Edwards.

I so agree with Ed Morrissey that she has no business using such language at the CPAC gathering because now CPAC is tarred with her invective and Democrats can score points about her saying that in front of a bunch of conservatives.

We're just saying it was stupid, unnecessary, and hateful. This is no different than Melissa McEwan calling Christians "Christofascist Godbags" and Amanda Marcotte's incendiary hate speech about Catholics. We howled about that when John Edwards hired them; why do we defend Coulter's appearance at CPAC?

Maybe that sort of juvenile invective goes over big on college campuses but it's not appropriate at a gathering of conservative thinkers and Republican presidential candidates. She has reduced a serious showcase of conservative opinion to the level of schoolyard name-calling. I wouldn't tolerate such language from my students and I certainly don't like it from political commentators.